What made The Return of the King (2003) the best-reviewed of EA's film games?

Start with the scores, because the title of this page is a claim and claims get checked here. On Metacritic, The Return of the King holds 85 out of 100 on PlayStation 2, 84 on GameCube, and 84 on Xbox. Its predecessor The Two Towers holds 82, 82, and 79 on the same three consoles, and EA's next film game, The Third Age, never rose above 75. That makes Return of the King the best reviewed of EA's film games on the platforms that defined the era, with one honest exception: on Game Boy Advance it scored 77, one point below The Two Towers at 78.

What bought those points was scope added in exactly the places reviewers had faulted the first game. The headline addition was a two player co-op mode, new to the series. Around it: multiple storylines instead of one, more playable characters, increased interaction with environments, larger and less linear levels, and differentiated fighting styles. EA debuted the game at E3 2003 promising precisely that list, and lead designer Chris Tremmel put a number on the battles: where The Two Towers occasionally showed 10 or 15 enemies, Return of the King has areas with up to 40.

The film integration deepened at the same time. The game was developed in close collaboration with the filmmakers, using many of the actual reference photos, drawings, models, props, and other assets from the film production, and EA's team traveled to New Line and the Weta offices in New Zealand monthly with builds for feedback. Reviewers rewarded the result: the article's reception summary records praise for the graphics, the THX certified audio, the music, and the voice acting, with GameSpy calling it a new standard for video game adaptations of movies.

The criticisms did not vanish, and the page will not pretend they did: camera positioning and short length were faulted in both games. But the balance tipped. Even its sales footprint, where documented, is respectable rather than record setting: the Windows version sold 240,000 copies in the United States by August 2006, and the PlayStation 2 version earned a Platinum sales award in the United Kingdom, indicating at least 300,000 copies there. The reputation, though, is the documented peak of the whole EA film run.